Skyscraper (19 page)

Lynn said instantly, joyously, “I'd love it.” Then she sobered. Tom would object, she realized with a sinking of her heart. She added more quietly, “I'd like to, a lot—but—must he know right away?”

“No, tomorrow will do,” Sarah answered, and left the room, with her easy, rather striding step. Lynn stared after her. It would be heavenly to spend a weekend in the country somewhere. But there was Tom. Why should he object? She asked herself angrily, unseeing eyes on the blue cards strewn on the desk. It was idiotic of him to be so sensitive where Dwight was concerned.

She resolved to say nothing until she had heard his news, whatever it was. She racked her brains for the remainder of the day, trying to discover some clue to his excitement and confidence, but could find none. That night he explained.

Jennie was out. Mara was out. They had the little place to themselves. Tom talked, pacing the floor, words hurtling over one another. Lynn sat there, her hands clasped, listening.

It was very simple. The Seacoast Bank and Trust Company was planning a merger with one of the biggest banks in the world; if the merger went through, and it had every likelihood of so doing, the result would be the biggest bank in the world, without doubt or rival. Tom had learned of the impending deal through certain channels open to him, correspondence, for instance, and overhearing here a word, and there another. “All very secret,” Gunboat had warned him. The directors' meeting would decide it, Tom supposed, but that wouldn't be for some time. Somehow, Bob Rawlson had got wind of the thing, too.

The Seacoast Company stock was at the moment at its very
lowest, due to the general downward trend of bank stocks. The merger would send it sky-high. The trick was to buy as much as one could, in small lots, here and there, without arousing any curiosity or speculation, and hang on until the big news got out. Of course, Tom didn't have much—but he'd borrow, mortgage his future; there were ways and means; he could borrow upon the principal of the small legacy which would come to him eventually, and Bob was going to borrow all he could too; they'd pool their interests. It meant, by autumn, perhaps, a big profit. What did Lynn think of it? He asked exultantly.

She replied slowly, “I think it's dishonest.”

“
What
?” He stopped, mid-stride. “You're crazy!”

“No, I'm not. You've learned this—you couldn't help learning it, in your position—and it's supposed to be secret. Like a trust almost. You've talked it over with Bob Rawlson. With me. Little by little it will get out, reach the ears of the market manipulators. You've no right to cash in on your knowledge even in a small way,” she told him. “It isn't honest; and it isn't loyal.”

“But it is honest,” Tom expostulated, “and as to loyalty—”

“How is it honest?” she demanded.

“It's perfectly legitimate business,” he protested. “You can't tell me that Gunboat and the others don't expect to realize on it.”

“They are officers of the bank,” she said, “and directors. That's different. You—you're just an employee. No, Tom, you've no right to do it.”

“You mean to tell me I haven't any right to buy a few shares of the bank stock at the present low?” he asked her. “Why, they're always urging me to buy the stock, you know that!”

“Of course, I know it.” Her chin went up. “And you're at liberty to buy the stock. The few shares you can afford to buy, outright, won't make any difference one way or another, and certainly wouldn't put you or anyone else on Easy Street, no matter how high the stock goes after the merger. But you're planning something else—you know you are. What is it?”

He said sullenly, “Rawlson thinks that if we get to the right people we can borrow all we want to—”

“You mean,” she said quickly, “you can sell your information. And you consider
that
loyal, I suppose—and honest.”

“Well, why not?”

She got to her feet. She was small and defiant, facing him. She said, “If you do this, I will never speak to you again!”

He said, “But Lynn—” He tossed his hands out in front of him in a gesture of hopelessness. “But I was going to do it—for you. So that we could get married, so that we needn't wait.”

“I was willing to wait,” she told him hotly. “I care enough for you for that. But I won't marry you on the proceeds of any breach of loyalty to the bank.”

“I don't owe the bank a damned thing,” he said stubbornly. “What has it ever done for me?”

“It's given you a decent job,” she told him, “and kept a roof over your head and fed and clothed you. I don't care what a person's job is, if it does that it deserved loyalty. Mr. Norton expects it of you. Your position with him carries with it certain obligations. Can't you see that you are bound to know a lot more than other people in the outside office? And bound to keep it—confidential? That's your job. Confidential secretary. I didn't think,” she said, and her voice shook, “that you'd ever listen to or be influenced by people like—like Bob Rawlson.”

“You never liked him,” he accused her absurdly.

“No, I never have, and my hunch was right!”

“Oh, hell—” He sat down wearily in the nearest chair, leaving her standing. Conscious of her tension, she forced herself to move about, emptying ash trays, straightening blinds, doing the trivial and unnecessary things women when they feel they have reached a crisis.

He said gloomily, “Gee, Lynn, I never thought you'd look at it in this way. I just said yes to Bob because it looked all right to me. It
is
all right,” he argued suddenly, with returning confidence. “That's the way fortunes are made. It's perfectly legitimate, Lynn; can't you see it that way?”

“No,” she told him stubbornly, “I can't and never shall. You haven't any right to use the information for your own ends; and if you go into whatever scheme Bob Rawlson has cooked up,
you'll find yourself in a lot deeper than you bargained for. The few shares you two could buy on your own, that would be nothing. He's got more than that up his sleeve and you know it.”

“It didn't,” confessed Tom very naively, “sound that way when he talked about it. Look here, do you mean what you said? I mean, that you wouldn't speak to me again if—”

“I mean it,” she said unhappily.

“All right—” He rose, hands sunk in pockets.

“Tom!” She ran to him, put her arms around him, looked up into his gloomy young face, “Tom, you mean that too. That you won't—”

“I suppose so. Lord, I hate to let Bob down.” Tom said, squirming inwardly at the thought. “What a piker he'll take me for.”

He cares, thought Lynn furiously, more for what that shifty eyed person thinks than what I think.

He didn't, of course. What she didn't realize was the curious twist of something called masculine pride, looking back to those talks with Rawlson, over dinner tables, planning, arguing, excited, not alone by the barely passable liquor they consumed, but by their gilt-edged plans. What she didn't realize was that, at twenty-three, the word
piker
is an unpleasant one—and relates pretty closely to the
cowardly custard
of little boyhood. At twenty-three no man wishes to be accused of women's apron strings binding him to a promise of caution; at twenty-three every man is secretly a soldier, a pirate, a highwayman—gallant and dashing and very gay. And talk of honesty and loyalty, putting so different a complexion upon high and thrilling deeds, is, to say the least, sobering and depressing.

There was something, Tom reflected glumly, of the schoolteacher in Lynn.

But that was an authentic disloyalty. Here, here she was in his arms, very small and sweet and warm, and, so she assured him, entirely his own. But she wasn't his own; and it was to make her so that he has planned and talked and listened, across the dingy table to Rawlson's persuasive low voice—“Chance of a lifetime, Shepard—”

Lynn detached herself without any effort from Tom's arms. She said, walking across the room and picking up a cigarette with fingers that shook, “Of course, if you think more of Bob Rawlson than you do of me!”

“Don't be an idiot,” was Tom's immediate return. “I—oh, I'll tell him tomorrow that I'm not having any.” But his voice was without enthusiasm. He was feeling as sulky, as sacrificial, and as wounded as the small boy caught the instant before committing some household crime and haled before the explanations and warnings of the judgment seat, stubbing his toe at a rug, and thinking, Gee I hadn't DONE anything, had I?

“That's all right then,” she said. But she wasn't sure that it was all right. She searched his face anxiously, every familiar and beloved feature of it. It told her very little. She said, suddenly conscious of weariness, of a growing headache, “If—do you mind going now, Tom? I'm awfully tired. I'd like to get some sleep before the girls get in.”

That was her mistake. But everything seemed so flat, so letdown between them. A good quarrel might have cleared the air. Perhaps, if she had mentioned David Dwight's weekend invitation—? But she hadn't; not would she. Perhaps if she had let him stay, a little longer, had turned her mind and his from the recent disagreement, from her triumph, which somehow didn't seem a triumph now? But instead, because there suddenly seemed nothing to say, she lifted her face for his kiss and heard the door close behind him, heard him go clumping down the stairs, and then for no good reason, it seemed, turned her face to the back of the shabby chair and wept.

It wasn't Tom's fault of course, she admitted, lying awake, staring into the darkness, searching in vain for the good sleep she had offered as an excuse for inhospitality. No, it wasn't his fault. He was—gullible. He was enthusiastic and impulsive and sick of grubbing on that fatal $50 a week with no future near enough to seize and look at and rejoice in; and Rawlson was older, cleverer. Tom wasn't, she told herself, not for the first time, a business man. He was perfectly at sea in graphs and dollars and cents and tickers and market reactions and
“big business.” He was an engineer, an inventor; his mind was wholly mechanical, constructive. She thought, he'll never make good—in the bank. But what else was there for him to do?

Drowsily she wondered about Mara. Where was she? And with whom?

The door bell rang violently.

Tom?

She rose, fumbled her way into robe and slippers, and went out into the living-room. She opened the door. Bill Burt stood there, glowering at her. The normal exclamation, “Why, Bill!” rose to her lips, and he brushed it away as one does an annoying trivial insect.

“Where's Mara?”

“She's out,” said Lynn.

“That's nice. With whom?” asked Bill.

She thought of her own mental query. Well, she knew nothing, and was glad of it.

“I haven't the least idea,” she said, and started to close the door.

But Mara's husband was a stocky and determined young man. His foot was in the door. He said grimly, “Oh, no, you don't. I'll come in—and wait—if you don't mind.”

“But I do mind. I'm alone here,” she told him angrily. “I'd gone to bed. You can just wait until tomorrow!”

“I don't intend waiting until tomorrow,” he told her, “and you can go back to bed. It may not be conventional but it won't hurt you once. I'm not here to see you. I'm here to see Mara. I intend to know what she's going to do. I haven't heard a word from her since she walked out on me.”

“Since you threw her out!” cried Lynn furiously.

“Is that what she said? Well, it doesn't make any difference.”

“You—”

But he had walked in and closed the door, spun his hat on a bookcase, and sat himself down in a chair.

She had rather liked him, unhappy, sulky, complaining though he had shown himself to her. Now she disliked him very much. She said, standing there before him, dark hair ruffled
about her face, “Mara was perfectly right to leave you—if you think she's going to stand for the way you treated her and—” She stopped, conscious of delicate ground.

“Oh, so she's told you about Betty?” guessed Bill, and grinned without mirth. “Well, what did she expect?” he asked defiantly. “If a man knows he isn't wanted he goes where he is—that's all there is to it. What about Frank Houghton?” he demanded.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” said Lynn, “and as long as I haven't the physical strength to put you out, I suppose you can stay. I'm going back to bed.”

She did, but not to sleep, followed by Bill's careless, “Suits me.” She lay there, all the drowsiness gone, wondering if there were any way she could reach Mara, warn her. Of course, she couldn't. Equally certain was it that Mara was with Houghton. Would he bring her home? She hoped fervently that he would not.

She heard the striking of matches as Bill sat there, smoking and waiting. If only Jennie would come. Jennie could handle him. But Jennie had said that she would be very late—“You and Mara better sleep in the bedroom,” Jennie had ended.